Stoop

I was setting on the stoop today after school, listening to the City and reading Lapham's Quarterly, an essay about slavery in ancient Rome, thinking about Spartacus and John Brown, a connection I'd not made before, and wondering if I could use it in the classroom, when some dude on a bike rolled up and dismounted and started rolling an American Spirit cig. I realized I'd met him before--last Saturday he helped me bust up some concrete with sledge and pick as we were doing another round of tree planting in Res Hill. He was blasting Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as we worked.

"I was just riding my bike around B'more today," he said, "and I realized I'd come up with a good breathing technique for riding uphill in a headwind. I won't tell anyone I know about this because they'll call me a fruit loop, but..." and a most peculiar conversation followed. We touched on yoga, early Christianity, Buddhism, Mubarek and Egypt and King Hussein in Jordan and Syria/Sudan/Libya/Iran, synchronicity in the Internet Age, and turning off the news.

"I'm really glad we had this conversation," he said at the end. "I'm Eric. Eric means 'friend of the Gods,' I think that's what it means--in Danish. Or maybe Dutch. I get them confused." And Eric rode off down Madison Ave.

Stoop sitting rules.